ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So, you find an artifact, but it's not something you need with your choice of class. What do you do?

You could sell them; some fetch a nice price. But it feels a little unsatisfying.

My idea: for each artifact, there is someone in the game who would love to have it, and you can give it to that person in exchange for a reward (perhaps they simply pay you, perhaps a skill point, perhaps something else?).

So if you find the Gift to the Shire, then there will be some hobbit in Bree who you could give it to. Obviously one of the mages of Angolwen would like the Staff of Destruction. Perhaps one of the weaponsmiths is looking for the Ring of the War Master. I'm not sure who would want Ringil, now that all the high elves have left, but maybe the lord of Gondor? And so on.

It would be a nice little list in your achievements at the end of the game:
"Restored the Gift to the Shire to its rightful owner."
"Found a worthy holder for the Staff of Destruction."
"Found Ringil, the glittering sword of Fingolfin, but decided to keep it."
"Retrieved the Choker of Dread, and decided to sell it."

Oh I like, the reward could indeed be talent/generic points, maybe it would depend on the artifact.. humm

Agreed. That sounds nice.
However, it should be fixed then, that you can find artifacts multiple times if you sell (or in this case: trade/donate) them. My mage (b9) found the ring of war master twice (Tol'Falas lvl9 and Spider Cave). Nice 50g extra.

I also like the idea.

Some ideas?

The ERP of Mana: Gives unlocked access to one random school of magic (without recharging, like a shadowblade) and one light/dark skill if all of them are already available.
The ERP of Healing: Gives one (or two?) extra points to the health skill and gives access to the tree. If health skill is at 5/5, +5 to base CON
The Gondor-tree Bow: Gives Shoot and 3 talent points; if Shoot is already available, +2 DEX also
The Gift to the Shire: Gives Shoot and +3 DEX; +5 DEX if Shoot is already available
The Ring of Ulmo: Intrinsic water breathing, unlocked access to Water school of magic (if already available, 3 talent points... or maybe unlock Cryomancy if not already unlocked?)
The Ring of the War Master: +2 to STR and DEX
Elemental Fury: Access to the Enhancement tree?
The Boots of Tom Bombadil: 2 talent and 2 generic points
Staff of Destruction: +4 MAG (or mana regeneration?)
Ringil: 30% magic resistance and 50% cold resistance
The Wand of Spydric Poison: 25% poison resistance
The Water Silmaril: +2 to all stats, +5 Luck

Taxorgian wrote:Elemental Fury: Access to the Enhancement tree?

Probably not a good idea. The Enhancement tree caused a bunch of balance issues the last time it was given to another class.

In general, I'd say something like this should give talent points, intrinsic bonuses, or access to generic trees only. Class trees are, well, class defining and many classes are balanced around what class trees they have access too, such as the Arcane Blade.

I'm sure Darkgod already thinks along similar lines but when I sat down to put organize all the Chronomancy stuff that sort of balancing was in my thought process. If a tree was generic I considered, what could X class do with these abilities. If it was a class tree I thought, how does this define this class. Crossing those lines will most likely cause a lot of future headaches.

Perhaps Elemental Fury should give 20% resistance for the 4 T4 elements (acid, fire, cold, lightning)? None of the magic trees are really balanced between elements.

What do you think of the other ideas?

I also quite like this idea in general as it is yet another example of transmuting "junk" in an RL into something uniquely meaningful to each given character.

I think they're a good starting point for brainstorming Tax but I find some of the unlocks counter productive i.e. giving up a really good bow to get the shoot skill, giving up the staff of destruction to get magic (presumably if you are a magic user you'd hang on to the staff and if you're not then handing it in doesn't do much for you).

Maybe thinking more in quest terms and less in reward terms would be better. For example, who would want the item and what could they teach you.

Gift of the Shire as an example, maybe it once belonged to a hobbit rogue's grandfather and he offers to train you. Player gains mastery in Survival or +3 Cunning or +3 Dexterity (player's choice).

Staff of Destruction; So-and-so the mage notices your Staff of Destruction and offers to train you in exchange for the staff. Player gains mastery in Conveyance, Divination, +3 Magic, or +3 Willpower (again player's choice, those without natural mana pools wouldn't have mana regen and would have to rely on mana pots or rings of regen to get mana back).

All that aside I think something like this might best start off with set artifacts drops because I for one find little reason to do either of the two starting dungeons if I'm starting off as a rogue or a fighter.

Maybe a Berserker wants Bill's Tree Trunk and you gain +3 Con for that one.

Maybe a fighter wants the Shield and teaches you how to defend yourself better +3 Def and +3 Armor.

Smashing The Choker of Dread in the Old Forest by the light of a full moon (scripted) might destroy it and grant the player 'Nature's Blessing'. Teaching them the Nature tree if they don't have it or giving them some intrinsic health regen, poison, and disease resist if they do.

*edit* Another thought on the set artifact drops. Maybe someone else has an artifact and would want to trade you? For example you're playing a rogue, you go through, get the tree trunk, and someone who really wants that will trade it to you for an artifact dagger you can't get otherwise? Tom's Toenail for instance!!

Anyway just some thoughts. I think keeping the rewards general enough that everyone will gain something from them is good or if that doesn't make sense giving the player a few things to choose from is also good. The whole idea seems to be if you can't use A you can exchange it for B. But if you can't really use A or B then well, there's really not much point.

I like the quest-and-story approach of edge, though Taxorgian of course also tried to stay "in theme" with the artifact. However, the main irony of Tax suggestions came to me on the very first line: "Sacrificing" the ERP of Mana to turn your char into a non-regen mana-user (at which point you would *REALLY* want the ERP of Mana) is just... mean.
But propably that is exactly the balancing aspect: You gain an ability by sacrificing the possibility to use a very desired artifact for exactly this ability.

Anyway, there is one major issue with both of your suggestions:

Power. You give away *much* to high reward. Remember: At some point, t4 will have much more artifacts implemented than now. Most of them will be outdated at some point of the game or for this class/build useless. That means, you will give a huge amount of artifact away, since you can use max. ~10 of them anyway (=> at least N-10 of N found artifacts will be given away). If you now give something in the order of magnitude of 2-4 skill/stat points and 20-50% (summed up) resistances per artifact, that results in a huuuuuuge inflation of skills, stat and resists.

I very much like the concept in general to give permanent boni to the character. But there are points that IMHO should be considered to keep things stable:

1. The permanent bonus must be small in relation to what the artifact gives when worn. The reason for that is quite obvious, because why wearing the artifact otherwise.

2. Be very careful with skillpoints. An overflow of additional skillpoints can cause a certain skillbuild to pass a critical point and then literally explode because of the synergies. Nevertheless I like the concept of being able to gain additional skillpoints, but that should be rare.(*)
They should thus be resticted to some very powerful artifacts.

3. Basically the same applies to elemental resists. If you're not careful, at some point all chars will be immune to all availible resistances.

3. Access to skilltrees: Okay, a lucky strike in this may kick a char offbalance because the combination is just imba (and not realised in a "normal" class for that reason). As an example a Sunpala with access to "Shield Wall" would be crazy because of the combination of Chant of Fortress/Fortitude (the % physdmg resist), rendering him basically physical immune even in higher lvls. Add the sustained mage-spells which grant additional DEF and then ignore all non-caster. I don't like this - at least not on a randomly basis (and that from me, cause I usually vote for more randomness everywhere ).


Suggestions that might work well (IMHO):
- elemental/physical resists (dmg reduction) if used *very* carefully
- skills (generic and class) if used *very* carefully
- resists of the *must have* immunities (stun, blindness, knockback)
- see invisible, infravision, trap detect, spell/mind/phys defence (the resists a spelleffect, not the dmg-reduction!)
- stat points (str, dex, mag, cun, con) but less than you suggested (see point #1). Open issue: should a "naked" char be able to get beyond 60 with this? If yes, the artifact-turn-in-quest should immediatly raise the max.stat-limit (currently: 60) by the amount of stat it granted. Otherwise, ppl will stash artifacts until they hit the limit (60).
- In some special cases: Special abilities (e.g. breath underwater). However, something like this is absolutely sufficient as a reward and should be quite rare/limited in access.
- some more brilliant ideas you may come up with


(*) Things like the Heart of the Sandwormqueen are different, because they are guaranteed (and thus can be considered in balancing) or if its a randomdrom: At least the amount of *possible* Hearts somewhere out there is limited.

I would argue that some extra MAG for a fighter type is actually useful in that it makes healing potions more effective (and in principle could make ID more effective but it's too much to invest).

And isn't it better to be able to use a little magic than none at all?

But I was largely basing the stats, etc., on the number of artifacts right now. There will have to be some toning down if there are a lot of artifacts -- but I'm not at all clear on how many DarkGod actually wants. (And the really powerful artifacts should give something really nice, at least if it's very dangerous to get them.)

Ok, lets see...
Ringil: 80% elemental resist (summed up)? Passive? And thus having the slot free for something else what gives boni too? Come on...

Ulmo: Waterbreathing (passive!) plus access to the water tree (and thus: freezestun, AoE knockback and AoE freezestun on chance - for the utility skill lvl1 would be sufficient - even without much MAG). If already availible add skillpoints worth of 1.5 lvls... Heavy...

Tom Bombadil: Skillpoints worth of 2(!) complete lvlups. Aye!

Okay, sure. Those artifacts are powerful. But if you consider to not use them, they're (relatively) trash for your char. Thus IMHO a "little" compensation for passing this ancient, powerful artifact on is absolutely sufficient. In addition: I consider even one free skillpoint already as really nice and worth quite some trouble... but that may be just my 2 ct.

Both Tax and Patryn make good points.

On the new talent masteries thing though I do want to bring up something DG said when the talents got split into class and generic. He envisions generic talents as being more akin to the old fumble finger quest rewards, there's just not a way yet for other classes to pick them up. In other words, something like this would be a good way to make some of the generic trees available to classes that don't start off with them.

I think the reward should be relatively minor. Basically, given an artifact, you have three choices:
1. Use it.
2. Sell it.
3. Give it to the person who wants it.

All three should be realistic choices.

So say you can sell an artifact for 50 gold, or trade it for one skill point. That skill point could be useful, but maybe the 10 potions of greater healing you could buy with the 50 gold would be more useful.

Basically I think option 3 should be a tradeoff, if not a small sacrifice. So that when you make your victory post with all the major artifacts traded, people know you're awesome, and not just taking the optimal route

@edge: Humm... yeah. Giving access to the "other" generic skilltrees could be an option without breaking gameplay. There a randomized Fumblefinger approach should work, as far as I can see...
At that point (as a sidenote) I was wondering why the passive "Combat techniques" skilltree (stamina/hp regen, spell defence etc) was considered as class talents. It just sounds like the intrinsic definiton of an generic tree (maybe renamed to "body mastery" or something and made CON-dependent).

@Repton: Given the fact that money is pretty useless after a certain point and a endless resource (in theory, limited by the players patience and grinding effort). On the other hand: skill and statpoints are a limited resource due to the charlvl cap /limited equipslots. Intrinsic, passive char properties cannot be gained at all at the moment, making artifact-quests the only source availible. Due to that I personally would *always* choose option #3 instead of #2 (gold). Doing the "right thing" (storywise from the char PoV) is just a nice bonus to comfort my roleplaying soul.